To us.
The slash in our throat closes in an instant. Our injured Blood rise. The shattered, fragile walls smooth into glistening starlight and clear crystal.
“Now,” the Speaker said.
A third scarab pops free of the coral. The sphinx smiles with us.
The boom rolls up from the ocean floor, a rippling wave of energy from the table’s epicenter. So much power the water recedes outside of the chamber, swelling waves from thousands of feet deep.
Too much. Human cities won’t be able to survive such a tsunami.
Winds rise, a howling wall ahead of the waves. Crashing together, angry seas and dark skies and flashing fins and glistening tentacles. All things of the deep. Catching the waves, absorbing the energy, and dissipating it back to the ocean.
Where it belongs.
An unnatural sound pierces our chamber. A wail of agony.
“Mother, forgive me,” the Dauphine screamed. “Take my life and spare me this pain!”
Our venom spreads through her body. A single drop tainting the wellspring of her blood. Cells die. She feels her life draining away.
Nothing can save her. Not her goddess. Not even Her Mysteries.
But it’s not enough.
Not after what she’s done.
We will never forget.
Thierry’s screams as the Dauphine’s black leeches slid out of him. His rotted insides spewing from his mouth even as his heart continued to beat. His sweet soul trapped inside dead flesh.
Selena’s beautiful spirit shoved inside a decomposing corpse that died five years earlier. A stumbling, mindless zombie forced to find us on foot. A deliberate message to wound and cause as much emotional pain as possible.
Esetta’s words echo in our consciousness. “Make her soul rot in the rankest filth for all time.”
We take all our pain. All our rage. Thierry’s screams. Selena’s horror.
We multiply it with the sphinx’s power of transference. Making it a million times worse.
And we shove it all into Jeanne Viennois.
52
SHARA
I stood in a shadowed room.
Me, in my body and mind, alone.
I’m Shara Isador. Last daughter of Isis.
I just killed one of the Mother’s daughters in as gruesome and painful way as I could imagine. The Dauphine’s insides liquified by venom. Her soul wrapped in dead, rotting flesh. Horror upon pain upon poison.
A hard smile curved my lips.
And I’m fucking glad.
“Me too,” Esetta said on my left. Her arm wrapped around my waist.